Nurture your body, invest in your mind.
Whether you have any degree of disordered eating, mental illness, or not, we all have an inner critic that can both drive and destroy us. Athletes can use it to our favour; our inner critic can spur us to attack and persevere through hard training. But currently, many of us have more time alone with our inner critic, don’t have our usual outlet of competition to keep self-criticism constructive, and have less ability to properly debrief with our social supports. Not to mention increased social media use and opportunity for downward self-comparison! This perfect storm can lead to focusing on insignificant and unhelpful outlets, such as food, body image, excessive training or worse.
Acceptance: The best way out is always through
Athletes are taught to “keep the ball rolling” — but when life changes and we no longer know what the ball is rolling towards, keeping it going without taking the time to reassess is to risk moving for months in a direction that won’t do anything other than lead us haphazardly down paths that end nowhere near what we wanted.
COVID-19 and Anxiety Disorders; Unearthing an Unexpected Blessing.
Those of us that have battled and suffered and fought our way through treatment, have more ways to deal with unexpected situations and overwhelming emotions than the average person would ever arm themselves with unnecessarily. So when the world changes in the space of a week, we have a foundation of learning to call upon; from breathing, to meditation, to distress tolerance skills, distraction techniques, and so many reframing strategies that make the rapid pace of change easier to bear. My past and the subsequent treatment has forced me to learn to live in the moment and be okay with not having control over most things in life. I have learnt it's okay to lose my freedom and sense of purpose, have no idea what the future holds, and that there is so much value in pushing forward anyway.
Finding the right support.
We try to forget about all the times I was turned away. All the times I got stuck in between with seemingly nowhere to turn. We have been turned away from help because I wasn't sick enough, because I was too sick, because lived the wrong place or because I ran out of eligibility. We have knocked on doors of hope only to be told they couldn't be opened for us for one reason or another. We have spent painful time waiting at home on packed lists; with Mum being the one burdened with having to learn how to care for me and me feeling like I was ruining not only my life but hers and my families too. I prefer being in hospital or in other people's care, because not only do they know more of how to help but also it takes away so much guilt. Home is supposed to be where I am loved and supported, but not where I am put under hospital protocol and my family is subject to all the horrible things this illness makes me do. It's not their fault I am like this as much as it isn't mine.